Simulated tissue models serve many purposes including but not limited to training of surgeons or other clinicians for practicing medical procedures, imaging, and other procedures requiring mimics having tissue like properties. For these applications the most useful simulated tissue models are constructed to provide realistic visual and biomechanical properties of actual tissue regions being operated on or passed through during a medical procedure. Such tissue models must therefore approximate actual tissue being encountered in a procedure as close as possible, for example, for surgical procedures, various sub-anatomical structures within the organ being operated on can differ in their shape, material and behavioral properties. Thus, simulated tissue models generally contain tissue mimic materials for each type of tissue likely to be encountered during a medical procedure.
Since image-guided surgical procedures are complex in nature and the risk associated with use of such procedures in the brain is very high, the surgical staff must often resort to performing a simulated rehearsal of the entire procedure. Currently, simulated tissue models for surgical training do not fully match the material and behavioral characteristics of physiological tissue. The tools and models that are currently available for such simulated rehearsal and training exercises may not provide a sufficiently accurate simulation of the procedure. For example, in neurosurgery, the meningeal layer must first be traversed in order to gain access to the brain. Current models for neurosurgical training are insufficiently realistic to mimic the material and behavioral characteristics of the craniotomy workflow, in particular cutting through the meningeal layer. Thus, a need exists for a realistic simulated fibrous tissue model of anatomical parts to provide a realistic representation of anatomical structures for surgical training.